I've been engaged in a couple of discussions on the DPReview.com forum and privately with a couple of friends regards RAW processing for K10D files. My RAW conversion workflow for the past year and more has been based entirely around Photoshop CS2+Bridge+Camera Raw. Some contend that Silkypix does a better job with the K10D captures on detailing and noise ... it is compatible with the K10 PEF files. RAW Developer is too, and many seem to find it quite a good RAW converter. And there's Lightroom, which I've been casually working with/learning for a while now. Lightroom and Camera Raw can only process the K10D DNG files ... but have no defaults set up for the K10D yet, and there is contention that they do not do as good a job on noise and detailing. So I decided to do some direct experimentation.
The light this afternoon was dark and flat. I went out and made some test exposures with camera and tripod, specifically targeting subjects that would exercise the RAW conversion routines ability to work with high detail, noise, and difficult color balance. I made both PEF and DNG exposures of each scene, at ISO 100, 400 and 800. I downloaded and installed the latest Silkypix and RAW Developer applications (evaluation copies) for Mac OS X. My testing would end up with a print to evaluate. I am not particularly concerned with how 1:1 pixel rendering on the computer screen looks, what's important to me is how an A3 print looks out of the R2400. So I won't be showing the Photoshop files that were produced ... you'll have to forgive me for this, but I'm testing for my work which is producing prints. Web display quality is secondary, and since I only ever post down-sampled, smallish renderings to the web, it isn't difficult to take a just acceptable print file and produce a perfectly good web rendering with respect to noise and detailing. Silkypix: I spent two hours trying to work an image with Silkypix and gave up. To me, the control interface and logic is completely impenetrable. I read all the documentation, tried to give it the maximum benefit of the doubt, and nothing I did looked even presentable. PEF default color balances were awful, way way way off base, and I could not find a way to correct them to get in the ballpark. DNG default color balances did a lot better but were still off. The best I could do with it produced an oddly colored, noisy looking, poor rendering. Not even worth producing a print to compare against. RAW Developer: I then turned to RAW Developer. Read the documentation, took the very same DNG file and started adjusting. I'm not entirely comfortable with the "curves style" primary adjustment adjustment mechanism but it got a decent rendering done for me. Took about 20 minutes. Noise and detailing are good (this particular image is an ISO 800 shot of leaf and grass). I intentionally turned off all noise reduction and sharpening, made a PSD file. Camera RAW: Next I went to ACR. I know ACR very very well. It took me five minutes to produce a rendering from the DNG file that I liked and output to a .PSD file, again, sans all sharpening, noise removal, etc. Used nothing but my standard techniques ... all on the "basic" adjustment panel. Everything came into where I wanted it to be in moments. I am not sure why some folks seem to have so much trouble with it. Lightroom: Then I took the file to Lightroom beta 4.1. I have spent some time working with Lightroom so I knew somewhat more about the controls than with RAW developer and Silkypix. To my amazement, I was able to dial in the rendering I wanted, even better than ACR, in about two minutes. I didn't expect that. Again, I turned off noise reduction and sharpening as best I could and output a .PSD file. Next I opened all three renderings in Photoshop CS2 and printed them to an A3 size. The renderings are slightly different ... the ACR version is the most neutral/flat, the RAW Developer version is a little richer, the Lightroom rendering is deep and rich. I could tune all of them to be as close as possible in Photoshop but that wasn't the point of this exercise: I want to see what I can achieve with the RAW converters. Photoshop is just a printing vehicle in this test. Comparing the three prints in detailing and noise using a magnifying glass, the Lightroom produced rendering is the best. It is slightly smoother and slightly less detailed than the other two, but it looks the best. The ACR and RAW Developer prints show more roughness from noise and slightly more detail, about on par in that respect. I know I could do more with the noise and detailing using techniques in Photoshop, but again that wasn't the point. This convinces me that I'm going to spend more time working with and learning Lightroom. I'll remain dependent upon Photoshop/Camera Raw as my production system until Lightroom goes final. And I will not spend any more time with Silkypix ... I just can't work effectively in that environment. RAW Developer has lots of promise, it would be better with some more time and practice. But it has some other issues, not concerned with either its user interface or rendering qualities, that cause me to turn away from it. You may wonder why I didn't include Pentax Lab in this effort. Simple: not enough time. I might install it and try it tomorrow. But I don't expect much from it, so it's not a big priority. In the end, whatever works for your needs is best. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
